I remember when...

[Desertdog]

When there were operators you talked to when you wanted to call somebody.

There were no such thing as power steering nor air conditioning in your car.

When it was 107 degrees and no such thing a A/C.  Thank God for fans.

A "calculater" was normally a pencil and piece of paper.  If you were really educated you might have .

The movie was $0.09, and 5 soda bottles would get you in with a penny left over for candy.

What are your memories of the "good old days."

[The Rabbi]

I remember when long distance phone calls were about $2 a minute and up.
I remember when stock broker commissions were $100 and more.
I remember when you had to go to the travel agent or call the airline to make reservations.  Those reservations were always expensive and you invariably had to go through Atlanta no matter where you were travelling to and from.
I remember when the top tax rate was 90%
I remember when Democrats had integrity.

[HankB]

I remember when Wal-Mart advertising proudly touted all the mechandise they sold which was "Made In America."

I remember when you could get a burger, fries, and a soda at Mickey D's and still get change back from your dollar.

I remember when competing gas stations frequently advertised "Gas Wars" and cut the price on a gallon of gas, often to less than 30 cents.

I remember when you could buy guns via mail order . . . though my age and my allowance were both a bit too small to take advantage.

I remember when 2-way radios were advertised by the number of transistors they had.

I remember when television sets had a bunch of tubes in the back - and fixing the TV myself by pulling the tubes, riding my bicycle down to Walgreens where they had a tube tester, and using it to identify the bad tube.

I remember when you didn't have cr@p shows on EVERY channel EVERY night - I mean who watches stuff like "Dancing Idol Survivor" or whatever the shows are called?

I remember when Republicans behaved like Republicans.

[Tallpine]

I remember back when I could still remember ...   

[Perd Hapley]

I remember when old fogies didn't reminisce on the interwebs. 

[Paddy]

I remember when young whippersnappers minded their p's & q's

The movie was $0.09, and 5 soda bottles would get you in with a penny left over for candy.

You must be really old.  Even I don't remember that far back.  Seems like we got a nickel for a pop bottle.

[nico]

I remember when Pluto was a planet, a $30,000 car was really expensive, a car having A fuel injector was a big deal, a 28" TV was big, Nintendo was much cooler than Atari, cell phones weighed ~5lbs and came in a bag or had to be installed in the car, and a 200MHz computer with a modem was state of the art.

I think I'm a little younger than some of you guys 

[cosine]

I remember when our home computer was running Windows 3.1. I remember when the Green Bay Packers won Super Bowl XXXI.


I think I'm a lot younger than most of you guys.  

[lee n. field]

I remember Woolworths.

I remember when pop came in returnable glass bottles.

Speaking of pop, I remember Tab.   <spew!>

I remember riding (standing up even) in the bed of my dad's pickup.

Thank God for fans.

Rattly oscillating fans with a protective grill open enough that the (metal) fanblades just might (in our young imagination) take off a finger.

I remember when television sets had a bunch of tubes in the back

Ditto car radios.

I remember when you didn't have cr@p shows on EVERY channel EVERY night

All three! channels - woo woo!  I love Lucy reruns 3 times a day.

I remember TV test patterns, and watching the little one minute blurb that started the day. 

[Desertdog]

I remember when old fogies didn't reminisce on the interwebs.

Me, too.  They played checkers either on the front porch or in the park. (No A/C)

Memory lapse in mid sentence; "If you were really educated you might have a slide rule."

[Perd Hapley]

Slide rules.  We actually learned to use those in some class I had in the nineties.  What are they for again?  Logs?  Square roots?  Can't recall. 

[Declaration Day]

I remember when the family car hit 80,000 miles, it was almost time for the junkyard
I remember being able to call ten local friends without having to dial 4 different area codes.
I remember being in Junior High, and kids who had a pager were thought to be drug dealers.
I remember when a PC was about $5, none of the models were compatible, and disk drives were separate components that weighed 15 pounds.
I remember when the SONY Walkman, which played cassettes, was a status symbol among kids, and were quite pricey.

Here's a good one:  I remember when MTV played MUSIC!

[Perd Hapley]

I remember when a PC was about $5, none of the models were compatible, and disk drives were separate components that weighed 15 pounds.

Not if you used your Walkman.     Does anybody else remember cassette tapes being used like floppies? 

[K Frame]

I remember when I had a full head of hair.

I remember when Arpanet was THE internet, and I remember conversing with my friend at Yale while I was at Dickinson.

I remember 300 baud acoustical couplers.

Everything else? I forget.

[Declaration Day]

Not if you used your Walkman.     Does anybody else remember cassette tapes being used like floppies? 

We had an ADAM computer that operated on cassette tapes.

[Perd Hapley]

Remember when gas pumps and other lowly machines didn't have the cheek to talk to you? 

[Sindawe]

Here's a good one:  I remember when MTV played MUSIC!

LOL!! Internet killed the video star.

I remember Fido-Net, WWIV-net and how cool Zmodem was for file transfers.

I remember developing my first spreadsheet on Lotus 123 from a ROM cartridge.

I remember 8-track tapes.

I remember watching the first run of "The Trouble with Tribbles"

I remember being able to lay in the backyard of my home in suburbia and actually still see the stars.

[DJJ]

I remember when...

Only one family in the neighborhood had a microwave.

Only one family in the neighborhood had cable, and it was controlled by a big brown box (hardwired) with two rows of mechanical channel buttons, like the preset buttons on old car radios.

Only one family in the neighborhood had a VCR.

Serious Sci-fi geeks would order a VHS tape out of the back of Starlog magazine that had 5 minutes of black-and-white, no-sound footage from "Star Wars", (which, incidentally, was just called "Star Wars" back then), and we were all amazed.

Walter Mondale promised to raise taxes.

[wmenorr67]

I remember leaving the house on a summer morning and not returning until the sun went down.  And mom and pops nor the mom and pops of my friends worried about where we were or our safety.

[meinbruder]

I remember when all televisions were black and white; color was just a luxury the rich could afford.  Since most of the shows were B&W even the rich didnt notice the difference very often. 

All three networks would stop regular programming when the President had something to say.  <Insert little boy voice> Oh Noooooo, Wheres Flipper?

When the President finished speaking the network would resume normal broadcasting in the middle of a Lucy re-run from the night before.  Mom loved Lucy.

My loony aunt buying a cheesy rainbow cellophane sheet to cover the screen of her Magnavox console set, trying to convince us kids that it was a color set.

Gas at 29.9 cents?  I remember when it hit 49.9 and people started talking about invading the Middle East to force the price back down to American levels.

I remember my folks buying a small home in a less than desirable neighborhood for 17K, 900 fabulous square feet of stick and stucco construction.  That property, they still own it, is worth 3/4 Mil now, and the neighborhood is even worse. 
}:)>

[Monkeyleg]

I remember when Keith Richards looked young and healthy.

[nico]

I remember when Keith Richards looked young and healthy.

BS!  He may have looked young, but he's always looked cracked out.

[Len Budney]

I remember Woolworths.

The last Woolworth's in Middletown CT closed down in the early 1980s. I remember it just well enough to think it's natural for department stores to have soda counters.

I remember when pop came in returnable glass bottles.
Speaking of pop, I remember Tab.   <spew!>
I remember riding (standing up even) in the bed of my dad's pickup.

I'm getting the impression you're the same age as me. You're younger than you're trying to sound.

I remember TV test patterns, and watching the little one minute blurb that started the day. 

Fighter jets! The national anthem! Very inspiring.

--Len.

[HankB]

I remember Woolworths.

I remember the local Woolworth's had a lunch counter where they served great cheeseburgers . . . and the Heinz ketchup in the bottle on the counter always tasted better than the Heinz ketchup your parents bought at the grocery store.

I remember you couldn't buy meat in a grocery store in the evening on a weekday, since the union butchers were gone by then and the law required a butcher on duty for a store to sell meat. (This was Chicago.)

I remember a local dime store with a wooden floor and ceiling fans.

I remember when gas stations used to give stuff away (a drinking glass, box of kleenex, etc. ) with every 10 gallon fillup. And every stop was a full service stop, where they cleaned your windows, checked your oil, etc.

I remember my first computer, an Atari 130XE . . . with 128kb of RAM, it outperformed the Commodore 64 . . . and at 2 MHz, ran twice as fast.

I remember using keypunch machines and card readers at my first job after getting my degree, and accessing the massive IBM 370 for technical simuations.

I remember the Fizznik, Squeeter, and Bosco.

Reruns of Flash Gordon serials on Saturday morning . . . with Buster Crabbe fighting Ming, the Clay Men, various monsters . . .

TV Wrestling with Verne Gagne, Bruiser, Crusher, Mad Dog Vachon . . . most of these guys looked more like beer-swilling teamsters than the steroid giants of today . . . but it was all just as fake.

Slide rules . . . still have my old Pickett Vector Log . . . and NO recollection of how to go about using it any more.

Listening for the bells of the Good Humor ice cream truck on a hot summer day . . .

All three networks would stop regular programming when the President had something to say. . . .

I was in grad school when Jimmy Carter interrupted the premier episode of Battlestar Galactica for one of his worthless chats. Nobody heard it since they were calling the White House to complain; so many called, the phone system crashed! In the student union there was shocked silence then a lot of cussing . . . and when THAT died down, a clear voice said "Where the h*** is Lee Harvey Oswald when we really need him!?!"  Cheers followed. 

[RocketMan]

I remember TV test patterns, and watching the little one minute blurb that started the day. 

I remember switching from "bars and tone" and running the two inch quad tape that rolled that little one minute blurb at 0-dark-30 each morning.

I remember "Duck and Cover".

I remember playing "Combat" with my friends in all the yards in the neighborhood on Saturdays, and no one called the cops because we had realistic looking toy guns.